


The Ferryman

by draculard



Category: Star Wars: Thrawn Ascendancy Trilogy - Timothy Zahn
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Basically Thrawn is Amish, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Found Family, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Planet Rentor (Star Wars), Post-Chaos Rising, The gang visits Thrawn's hometown, Worldbuilding, i don't make the rules
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:34:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27677462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: When an anonymous messenger sends Thrawn strange images from his own childhood, Ar'alani decides a visit to Rentor is in order.
Relationships: Ar'alani/Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo, Che'ri & Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo, Past Thrass | Mitth'ras'safis & Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo, Samakro | Ufsa'mak'ro & Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo, Thalias | Mitth'ali'astov & Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo
Comments: 16
Kudos: 66





	The Ferryman

The house in the holo was low to the ground with its foundation cut deep into the ice to protect it from an eastern wind. Layers of metal sheets insulated the roof, with a core of aluminum in the middle for heat conduction; fluid circulated throughout the structure to keep the warmth of the house from leaking into the ice below. 

Outside the house stood a small boy perched on a kitchen chair and balancing on tip-toe so he could peer over the edge of the roof. Red eyes glowed from the slit of a snow-crusted balaclava; he bore the weight of an ice axe on his belt and a pair of crampons thrown over his shoulder without complaint, as if he’d borne them all his life. On the roof, sizzling from heat transfer and the light of a white dwarf in the distance, was a tray of gutted and split fish left out to dry.

The boy watched them patiently as they dried, no expression on his face. When moisture started to show on the trays, he reached out, using both hands to wield a large wooden spatula clearly not meant for a child his age. He wedged the blade of it beneath each of the fish in turn, flipping them over for the other side to dry.

The holo flickered and started over. With a quick roll of her eyes, Ar’alani fast-forwarded to the next one. It showed a somewhat similar scene; the same young boy, who couldn’t be more than six years old, was making his way down the surface of the iceberg with the assistance of a climbing rope and the crampons and ice axe she’d seen earlier. An empty basket was secured on his shoulders, ready to be filled by the fisherman below. He moved unassisted, though older, apparently unrelated climbers could be seen in the background of the holo.

As she watched, a gust of wind made the boy’s rope sway dangerously, but the boy did nothing except tuck his head in and hold on tight, staying still until the wind died down. The other climbers showed no concern or even awareness of the child scaling down next to them. He made his way toward the ocean docks inch by inch, stopping each time the gales picked up again; when the rope swayed and dashed him against the icy surface, his face showed nothing but stoic patience as he waited for the wind to stop again. 

Ar’alani clicked forward to the next holo. The boy stood near a dingy fishing craft, too small to help but waiting with a certain alertness about him that made it clear he had a job to do and was only waiting for the adults to send him in. In the meantime, he cocked his head, and Ar’alani got the feeling he was memorizing the knots the sailors used to secure their boat. 

A tall, burly man — likely the boy’s father — stopped and knelt next to him briefly as he walked past with an armful of equipment. He freed one arm and the boy leaned into a quick, awkward hug, his tiny hands visible as he clutched his father’s coat. He didn’t look away from the work for a second, even when his father stood and walked away.

“Alright,” said Ar’alani when the holo started over again. “What are we looking at here?”

Samakro stood before her stiffly with his hands folded behind his back in perfect military posture, but at this question, he cut his eyes toward Thrawn and muttered, “The most depressing childhood I’ve ever seen?”

Thrawn returned Samakro’s look with a cool glance. “These files were sent to me anonymously using a scrambled address code.”

Ar’alani clicked through; besides the holovids, there were also still images, a few of them posed for and reasonably high-quality for their age, others candid and grainy. All of them showed the same small boy from earlier, sometimes — but only rarely — on his own; in what appeared to be a class photo from primary school, he smiled broadly at the camera, his canines missing and his hair mussed, with a ragged gash healing on his forehead, as if he’d smacked his head against the ice. Other photos were less clear; in one candid shot, multiple children stood on chairs tending to fish on the roof of a low building, their backs to the camera so that Ar’alani couldn’t tell which boy was the subject of interest.

The photos followed the boy to early adolescence — about eleven or twelve — where he became more easily recognizable. Ar’alani examined the images for a moment before glancing up at Thrawn.

“So somebody sent you holos of yourself,” she said flatly. “And that’s cause for concern … why?”

Thrawn inclined his head in response to her first statement, but didn’t immediately answer her question. His eyes were hooded and fixed on the holos before him in quiet contemplation.

“Quite nice of them,” said Samakro, his patience with this meeting clearly wearing thin — though he’d invited himself along, so Ar’alani wasn’t sure what reason he had to complain. Thrawn spared Samakro an unreadable glance before turning his eyes back to Ar’alani.

“Until recently,” he said, his voice even, “I was under the impression there was only one holo of me as a child.”

He flicked the display to the class photo from primary school.

“These others…” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve never seen them before. The fishing villages of Rentor are not technologically-inclined. When I was a child, we had only one collective imaging unit — an old-fashioned camera — which was accessible through the public library.”

Ar’alani glanced at Samakro, who was staring at Thrawn in stunned disbelief, as if he’d never heard anything so provincial in his life. Ar’alani had to stifle a grimace herself; sometimes, talking to Thrawn was like stepping into a period piece on colonial times — or, less kindly, one of the mean-spirited parody films about Rentor where everyone depicted was a techphobic religious yokel who’d left school at the age of nine and started popping out infants at thirteen.

She cut her eyes toward the holos. He was wearing homemade furs and drying fish on the _roof_ , for God’s sake. 

Ar’alani shook these thoughts away and held out her hand for Thrawn’s questis. He passed it over without comment and she saw the message was already pulled up for her to examine. “There’s nothing in these holos that qualifies as blackmail, unless I’m gravely misunderstanding Rentorian culture,” she said, studying the message’s metadata. It gave her woefully little to go on, and she was sure Thrawn had already taken a thorough look himself. 

“No,” said Thrawn, his eyes narrowing. “But the existence of the holos alone is…”

“Miraculous?” Samakro suggested.

Thrawn side-eyed him. “Disconcerting,” he said. 

Ar’alani spun the dial on the holoprojector, flipping rapidly through the images and vids. After a moment, she rounded her desk and took a seat, staring up at Thrawn through the glittering blue dust of the holos. 

“Tactically speaking, what do you think the purpose of this message is?” she asked.

“To distract me,” said Thrawn at once.

Samakro’s throat bobbed as if he were stifling a scoff. Ar’alani raised an eyebrow at him, daring him to say something, but he wisely pretended not to see.

“And strategically?” she said, turning her eyes back to Thrawn.

His face darkened. “A distracted enemy is an incapacitated one. General Ba’kif has taken to calling me his problem-solving captain. Anyone with connections to the Ruling Families will know my investigations as of late.”

“You think this has something to do with the so-called gifts cropping up here and there?” asked Ar’alani, her voice carefully flat. Samakro’s nostrils flared; he seemed suddenly vindicated by his decision to tag along. And well he should be — his family was a direct rival to the Mitth, and both families had been receiving unprecedented technological boons as of late from the Ascendancy’s latest ally.

The Benefactor, as he called himself. Jixtus. 

“Do you have any enemies on Rentor?” Ar’alani asked, studying the photos.

Thrawn considered it, his eyebrows slightly furrowed. “None who would have means to watch me from such a young age,” he said. “And none who could have taken the final photo.”

The final photo showed a wooden frame inside a dimly-lit house, presumably the same one Thrawn had grown up in. The frame served as a large bed, inside of which was a sleeping jumble of children, all of roughly the same age and dressed in the same provincial clothes. It had taken Ar’alani a moment to figure out which of the children was Thrawn — the smallest boy, no older than three years old and sandwiched haphazardly between his siblings and cousins, was the only one which bore a strong resemblance to the man before her today.

“Do you have any _friends_ on Rentor?” Ar’alani asked, changing tack. Thrawn took a bit longer to consider this question; Ar’alani had heard once that in one of the Rentorian dialects of Cheunh, there was no distinction between the word ‘friend’ and the word ‘ally,’ but she’d never asked Thrawn what dialect he grew up speaking. 

“No friends,” Thrawn concluded finally, his voice unbothered. Samakro’s expression shifted, turning into something tangibly uncomfortable. 

“And your parents couldn’t have…?” Ar’alani gestured toward the last picture of the children in bed. Some of Thrawn's siblings were missing, she noted, though she didn't know enough about Rentor to explain why.

“No,” said Thrawn. His tone was firm and unwavering; whatever the situation on Rentor technology-wise, he seemed confident his parents couldn’t have accessed an imaging unit without his knowledge, and Ar’alani supposed he would know.

She checked her questis. The _Vigilant_ was in dock for refitting and would remain as such for the next month; the _Springhawk_ was still working to deal with the repercussions of its bridge-to-bridge crash against General Yiv’s ship, leaving it in a similar situation. She glanced up at the two officers standing across from her.

They were going stir-crazy with all their men on leave. She could see it in Samakro’s face and in Thrawn’s tense shoulders. In point of fact, she was going stir-crazy, too. She flipped through the holoprojector one more time, taking note of the landscapes visible in each image.

“I don’t suppose you gentlemen have any plans for shore leave,” she said.

Slowly, Samakro and Thrawn turned to look at each other, sizing each other up.

“No,” said Thrawn.

“No, _ma’am_ ,” said Samakro with a touch of stiffness in his voice. 

Ar’alani quirked her eyebrows at Thrawn. “Care to take a trip?”

Thrawn’s face darkened. “The ships which attacked Csaplar months ago served to distract the Ruling Families from conflicts in other regions of the Ascendancy and its surrounding territories. On a smaller scale—”

“Yes, yes,” said Samakro impatiently, waving his hand. “You’re _so_ smart and _so_ important that some unknown and unconfirmed enemy has somehow accessed your mother’s scrapbook and sent it to you _purely_ to distract you from a nefarious plot to destroy the Ascendancy by giving us all a nice batch of gifts. We know.”

Thrawn’s face was carefully blank. 

“Are you coming with us?” Ar’alani asked Samakro politely.

“Are we going to Rentor?” Thrawn countered before Samakro could respond.

“Of course I’m coming,” Samakro snapped, as if Thrawn hadn’t spoken at all. “As Mid Captain of the _Springhawk_ —”

 _As an Ufsa,_ Ar’alani thought wryly.

“—it’s my duty to make sure the Senior Captain is safe when we’re off-duty,” Samakro continued. Thrawn turned to him with narrowed eyes.

“Your home planet, Captain?” he asked.

Samakro narrowed his eyes right back. “Naporar,” he said with a bite in his voice. “Why?”

“Do you have any experience with Rentor?” Thrawn continued levelly.

“Oh, please. Don’t patronize me.”

Thrawn inclined his head and turned back to Ar’alani, who could tell from the blankness of his face that he’d decided Samakro — by dint of his insistence on tagging along — was now a suspect, or at least a possible conspirator with whoever had sent him the photos. When Ar’alani glanced at Samakro, she found herself mentally labeling him as a distraction as well, and cursed herself for bowing to Thrawn’s influence so quickly.

Aloud, she only said, “Very well. Mid Captain Samakro, you’ll arrange a travel route for the three of us. Thrawn, as the only native Rentorian, you’ll see to it that the three of us are equipped for the elements.”

He opened his mouth to argue with her; at the same time, he reached for the holoprojector, and Ar’alani flipped it over to him with a smile. The change in expression made him reconsider what he was about to say.

“The sky-walker,” he said instead. “And her caregiver.”

Ar’alani waited for him to ask an actual question, but he didn’t, apparently deciding that those two nouns were enough for her to understand him. She raised an eyebrow.

“Is there some reason they can’t stay in their apartment, as they have been since the _Springhawk_ was damaged? Do they need military supervision so badly?”

Was it just her, or was Thrawn actually blushing? She sat back in her seat, noting the faint increase in facial heat with amusement. Samakro, on the other hand, seemed more exasperated than surprised by the turn in conversation.

“He promised the child he’d take her to Rentor someday,” he said with disgust that seemed partially feigned to Ar’alani.

“ _If_ I ever go back,” Thrawn protested.

“You promised a sky-walker you’d take her _sight_ - _seeing?_ ” asked Ar’alani, her amusement fading fast.

“She’s never been,” said Thrawn with a careful sort of dignity that did nothing to hide his awkwardness. “Nor has Thalias.”

Ar’alani stared at him flatly and watched as his blush increased a little.

“They pressed me,” he said, his lips thinning.

“Ah,” said Ar’alani. “And as a proud Chiss warrior, you of course did what you are trained to do during negotiations and … just _caved_.”

Thrawn met her gaze levelly, squaring his shoulders. “It was the wisest tactical decision, diffusing a possible meltdown before it started.”

“Except now you have to take her to Rentor,” Samakro muttered.

“ _If_ we go,” Thrawn said, swiveling his eyes sideways toward Samakro. “When I promised, I had no intention of ever going back.”

“Well, we’re going,” said Ar’alani. She glanced down at the holoprojector and then up at Thrawn with a roll of her eyes. “And so are the sky-walker and her caregiver, evidently.”

“If we have the funds,” said Thrawn doggedly.

“We have the funds,” said Ar’alani, her voice a little grim. “Transporting them to Rentor is a thousand times cheaper than that apartment they’ve got on the orbital station. They’re charging the Fleet an arm and a leg for it; you might just earn a second financial medal for taking them on this little trip.”

“A _second_ financial medal?” said Samakro incredulously. He turned to Thrawn, whose face had gone blank again. “ _You_ earned a financial medal? How in the hell did that happen?” Turning back to Ar’alani, he said, “Did you know he spent over a thousand _ch’un_ on _facepaint_ last month?”

Ar’alani’s face was a cool mask. She waited until Samakro had quieted down — and gave him and Thrawn a moment to simmer in awkward silence — before she spoke. 

“We’re going to Rentor at the earliest possible convenience,” she said evenly. “Due to Senior Captain Thrawn’s … _hospitality_ , Thalias and Che’ri will be coming with us. You each have your orders. Dismissed.”

They nodded, turning to go. 

“It’s about time you invited me to see your family home,” she muttered as Thrawn reached the door.

Samakro grimaced at both of them on his way out.

* * *

Furs were traditionally the hottest commodity on Rentor, and it showed in the clothing Thrawn had supplied for Ar’alani and Samakro. Samakro adjusted his collar with a grimace, picking his fingers through the yellow fur on the fringe as if it might bite him.

“Is this _real_ tuskcat fur?” he asked with obvious distaste.

“I would hardly insult you by buying synthetic,” said Thrawn. He sat on the other side of the battered commercial watercraft called _The Icebreaker,_ across the aisle from Ar’alani and Samakro, with his eyes fixed to his questis. Behind him, Thalias was nodding off in her seat, while Che’ri knelt on the worn leather and pressed her nose to the viewport glass, pulling back occasionally to rub some warmth into her cheeks before she went back to staring.

“Tuskcats are the Ufsa family mascot, as you _very well know_ ,” Samakro hissed, leaning forward to see past Ar’alani. “I’d be publicly crucified if they caught me wearing something like this.”

He was exaggerating. At worst, he’d make it into one of those “Worst Dressed” holozine articles that the Syndics were always gossiping about. Still, Ar’alani was on Samakro’s side; if there was one thing Thrawn was irritatingly well-versed in, it was fashion — he knew what he was doing when he gave Samakro the tuskcat furs.

Across the aisle, Thrawn shook his head. To someone who didn’t know him well — like Samakro — his innocent confusion seemed unfeigned.

“On Rentor, fur indicates status,” he said. “I did not intend to insult you, Mid Captain. Tuskcat furs will go a long way toward gaining local acceptance; it is the mark of a warrior.”

He shifted subtly as he spoke, accidentally-on-purpose letting his questis screen come into view so Samakro could get a brief glimpse at the audit Thrawn was currently doing on his own finances. A steep sum flashed into view, and Ar’alani’s first thought was that she was looking at the price tag for Samakro’s tuskcat cloak — which was, of course, exactly what Thrawn _wanted_ her to think, she thought. She glanced at Samakro and could tell from the chagrined look on his face that he bought it.

Knowing Thrawn, the price tag was not for the furs but for the _Springhawk’s_ latest repairs, and the funds in question were likely his official account as the ship’s captain, not his personal — but Ar’alani wasn’t going to let Samakro in on the secret. She examined her own furs, which were stowed in the bag at her feet; for her, Thrawn had selected white bresca fur, a reflection on her rank. 

Outside the viewport, Ar’alani watched as chunks of ice skimmed by on the surface of the ocean around her. _The Icebreaker_ was not equipped with repulsorlifts, making this a nauseatingly primitive journey — repulsorlifts would work when flying over the larger icebergs where Rentorians made their settlements, Thrawn said, but would only push the smaller bergs, shelves, and various minor chunks of ice deeper into the ocean, wreaking havoc on the local weather patterns as the water churned. As a result, Ar’alani and Samakro were stuck doing this the peasant way.

It wasn’t fun. _The Icebreaker_ was scarcely watertight; a thin sheen of water waxed over the floor each time they crested a wave, only to recede again. Ar’alani watched it pool around her boots for a moment and thanked the stars — not for the first time — that she’d tasked Thrawn with selecting their gear; everything they wore and carried, bags included, was waterproofed by an aerosol spray that left them all smelling faintly chemical, but dry.

Next to her, Samakro shifted in his seat, grumpily adjusting the collar of his parka again. “What furs did _you_ get, then?” he said as he eyed Thrawn.

Thrawn was staring at his questis again, and he didn’t glance up as he answered. “Jorila fur,” he said.

When Samakro and Ar’alani only stared at him, both studying the silky blue-black fur that lined his coat, Thrawn turned his questis off and turned slightly in his seat.

“A jorila is a local water mammal,” he explained. “Thick-skinned, with an insulating layer of brown fat and a coat of soft, thick fur covered in microscopic geometric barbs shaped much like scales. The barbs keep the individual hairs tangled together, trapping air close to the jorila’s body for insulation. Observe.”

He flipped his questis on again, pulling up an image from an old-fashioned encyclopedia he’d apparently downloaded, since — as he’d warned them multiple times — Rentor’s access to the InfoNet was spotty at best, and utterly nonexistent on the open sea. The animal in question was handsome and musteline.

Samakro scoffed. “We have those on Naporar,” he said almost indignantly. “They’re not called _jorilas_. They’re called yenrats.”

“Yenrats are freshwater creatures,” Thrawn replied, his voice even. 

“Let me see!” Che’ri said, her voice cutting through the air like a chime. She leaned over the back of Thrawn’s seat expectantly and made a low _‘ooh’_ noise when he handed her the questis.

“And the plural form of jorila is _jorila’a_ , not jorilas,” Thrawn continued placidly. “It’s a local dialect, not standard Cheunh.”

Ar’alani cut off Samakro’s biting response with a question of her own, leaning forward in her seat to block Thrawn’s view of the Mid Captain. “Jorila fur is a traditional choice in fur for native Rentorians?” she guessed.

“Yes,” said Thrawn, seeming subtly satisfied with her deduction. “Particularly in my home village, where the hunting of jorila’a in colonial days shaped much of the local mythology and culture.”

As Che’ri handed the questis back, preening about the fact that she and Thrawn had matching furs, Ar’alani pulled up the files she’d saved from Thrawn’s messages. She flipped silently through the images he’d been sent and called up an image of Thrawn as a toddler clutching what she now knew to be a stuffed jorila toy. She showed it to him, her face utterly blank. He stared at it for a long moment, his face blank, too, and then gave her a subtly challenging glare until she dismissed the image again, hiding her own amusement. 

Samakro missed the whole exchange; his attention was once again centered, rather glumly, on his tuskcat fur.

“What’s the local mythology on tuskcats?” he asked with a hint of suspicion in his voice.

Diplomatically, Thrawn replied, “Tuskcats are not native to Rentor. Most land-based mammals would not survive here; as such, there is very little local mythology regarding them.”

Which seemed to Ar’alani like a polite way of saying he’d deliberately marked Samakro as an off-worlder, someone who could not be trusted. She eyed him, trying to figure out if his motives had something to do with Samakro’s family name — it was unlike Thrawn to play politics, but he’d subtly expressed his suspicions earlier about Samakro’s eagerness to tag along, and he’d been working hard to understand the political game better ever since the Benefactor began showering gifts on the Ruling Families — or if it was just plain mischief. Even studying him, it was impossible to tell. 

She’d found him so open and easy to read when he was younger, she thought wistfully. More guarded than most people, but not entirely closed-off. Rentor was famous for its stoicism, but even so, she’d occasionally glimpsed emotions the locals would consider unacceptable in their extremity: eagerness, anxiety, surprise. 

That was before the Vagaari, though. Before Outbound Flight. She turned her head to stare at the torn leather of the seat in front of her, wishing for the first time that she’d taken the window seat so she could at least stare at the ocean instead. 

“And the caregiver’s furs?” asked Samakro, jabbing a thumb in Thalias’s direction.

Thalias’s head lolled on her shoulder, the cool red fur of her coat providing a soft cushion. It looked coarse but striking, and Ar’alani still hadn’t decided if she preferred it to the white besca fur Thrawn had chosen for her.

“Common frostfox,” Thrawn said, wiping a smudge of jam off the screen of his questis from where Che’ri had handled it. “Exotic, and therefore respected, but cheap, and therefore respectable.”

Rentor culture. Ar’alani shook her head, wondering if she would ever truly understand it. Samakro looked similarly flummoxed. 

“Cheap is respectable?” he asked doubtfully.

“Thrift is a virtue,” Thrawn said — although to his credit, he said it without a hint of self-righteousness. He was preoccupied with the stubborn smear of jam on his screen. “Self-reliance even more so,” he said. “A man who can make functional clothes from the materials around him is more respected than he who simply purchases the latest shipments from Csilla in pre-fab style. Authority and wealth are objects of suspicion in Rentor’s fishing villages, particularly in areas with historical class divisions.”

Samakro leaned toward the viewport, eyeing an iceberg which had just come into view. “And what about areas with _current_ class divisions?” he asked.

Thrawn’s only response was a quiet snort. From the way he settled back in his seat and studied his questis, he apparently thought that was more than enough.

Ar’alani and Samakro shared a look.

* * *

 _The Icebreaker_ docked not long after Thalias woke up, roused by Che’ri’s full-volume commandeering of Samakro’s questis to play point-and-click games. It was only the five of them on the vessel — disregarding the crew, whom none of them had seen since boarding — and they stirred lazily, half of them craning their necks to get a glimpse at the iceberg while the other half dug through their bags, putting some items aside and pulling other items out.

Ar’alani shrugged into her white furs and once again caught herself eyeing Thalias’s frostfox coat. When she forced herself to look away, she found Thrawn gazing at her, his eyebrows raised a fraction higher than they normally were. 

“All set?” Ar’alani said, turning quickly to Samakro. He blinked up at her in the middle of extricating his gloves from his bag. Across the aisle, Thrawn stood and deftly kicked open a storage locker inside the wall, where he’d organized their climbing gear before they left. 

“Crampons on,” he said, taking the smallest pair and handing them to Che’ri. “The docks are slick. Here.”

Che’ri was staring at the spiked footwear in confusion, and Thrawn temporarily abandoned his task to take it from her with gentle hands. He flipped it the right way up and eased it onto her foot, showing her the proper way to fasten it. When he was done, he handed her the other one and watched her put it on to make sure she got it right.

“Very good,” he said when he was done. “Samakro, Thalias—”

He handed them their crampons in turn, watching closely as they put them on. Ar’alani could see Samakro simmering under the scrutiny, but he managed to fasten the crampons without too much fumbling, and Thrawn gave him an approving nod. He tightened Thalias’s for her; by the time he stood and gathered his pair from the rack, Ar’alani had already collected her crampons and put them on.

Thrawn didn’t bother to check hers, a fact which earned her half-envious and half-sulky glowers from Samakro and Thalias. Thrawn divvied up the harnesses and belts, checking each person’s rope clip before they exited _The Icebreaker._

“Ar’alani is the only one with ice-climbing experience, I believe,” he said, guiding them out. “So we’ll go over the technique once we reach the wall. Watch your step.”

He anchored himself on the dock and wrapped his hands around Thalias’s forearms, helping her off the boat so she could watch Che’ri, who Ar’alani swung up into Thrawn’s arms. Samakro and Ar’alani joined him next; Thrawn gripped Ar’alani by the hand rather than the forearm, barely helping her at all — which she appreciated — and giving her a chance to feel his warm skin against her own.

He gestured them down the dock toward the massive wall of ice, and after a moment, Ar’alani led the group away, if only to get them out of the path of a dozen bustling fisherman. Thrawn stayed behind for a moment, speaking with the crew of _The Icebreaker_ in the lilting tones of the local dialect before he turned to join them.

“You’re adapting quickly,” he said as he reached Samakro’s side. Samakro shot him a peeved look. “Your flat-foot technique,” Thrawn said, pointing down at Samakro’s feet. 

“Oh,” said Samakro, losing some of his bluster. Thrawn turned to Thalias, quietly correcting her balance before giving her a nod of approval as well.

“It’s easiest to climb the ice with a mixed technique,” he said, shrugging into his harness. “The pitons and ice screws are already in place and well-secured, so your focus is needed only for the climb itself. It’s best to kick straight in with your dominant foot — not _too_ hard; mind the ice — and use your other foot to scale flatly, like this.”

Without bothering to clip onto a rope, he swung his ice axe into the wall before them and hoisted himself up a little, stabbing his left foot into the ice. The points on the front of his crampon dug in firmly; he splayed his other foot out to the side with his sole flat so the points on the bottom secured him against the wall.

“This is less tiring than simply kicking,” he explained without glancing back. He detached himself from the wall easily and jumped back down onto the dock, earning a few beady glares from the passing locals. “Take care not to kick multiple times per step. You’ll bring plates of ice down on anyone beneath you. Che’ri, would you like to climb by yourself or ride on my back?” 

He asked the question as casually as if he were asking her what she’d like for breakfast. A clamor of responses came from Ar’alani, Samakro, and Thalias, snarls and shouts overlapping each other and basically coming out to a unanimous — and very stern— “She’s riding on your back.” Thrawn’s nose twitched at the sudden uptick in noise level, but he nodded as if he hadn’t been scolded and clipped a harness into place over Che’ri’s chest.

“Your harness fuses to mine,” he explained, unbuckling his and twisting it around at the waist to show her the clip. “This will prevent you from falling.”

Che’ri watched him fuse the harnesses together and pull it apart again with narrow eyes. “What if _you_ fall?” she asked.

The remaining adults eyed Thrawn, equally curious. Ar’alani knew that any of her other subordinates his age would respond to a question like that with something overly confident and non-reassuring like, “I’ve been clearing away the rotten ice and planting pitons since I was three. I won’t fall.” Even a simple, “I won’t, trust me,” would be standard.

But Thrawn crouched in front of Che’ri and placed the rope in her hands, inviting her to pull on it with all her strength. After she’d done so, he gave it an even harder tug himself, wedging his crampons into the ice beneath his feet and throwing his weight into it. The rope stretched only an inch or two, and did so very slowly.

“The rope will catch you,” Thrawn said, still leaning as far back as he could. He gestured at the rope. “Look closely. See how the fibers stretch? Have you heard of polylastic rope before?”

Che’ri gave a slow, dubious nod. As Ar’alani watched, the rope made a faint clicking noise and gave Thrawn another inch of leeway. 

“It’s a polymer-metal blend. It lets go slowly, so no one who falls is in danger of serious injury,” Thrawn said. “The fact that it stretches at all prevents most minor injuries as well; if the rope stayed perfectly taut, it could break your ribs. The material prevents that by letting you fall at a measured pace.”

Che’ri said nothing, thinking this information over with a studiousness that Ar’alani could relate to. Thrawn watched her, and when she didn’t seem totally comforted, he glanced up at the iceberg.

“Would you like to see me fall?” he asked.

He was greeted by three horrified expressions and one exasperated one, which came of course from Ar’alani. 

“It won’t hurt me,” he assured Che’ri, whose horror was mitigated somewhat by a tentative fascination. “How high would you like me to climb before falling? I can go all the way to the top if you like.”

“ _Thrawn_ ,” said Thalias.

“There’s no danger to it,” he said absently, still studying Che’ri’s face. After a moment, he hit a button on his harness and let the rope play out another meter or so. “Let’s compromise,” he said, stepping to the edge of the dock. “Watch this.”

He grasped the extra length of rope he’d afforded himself and pulled it closer to him, bringing the slack to the end of the dock. There was a drop of about four meters from the metal plating beneath their feet to the icy ocean below. Thrawn glanced down once, his expression almost bored, and then let himself fall backward over the edge.

Ar’alani and Thalias reached for Che’ri’s arms, but neither of them could stop her from rushing to the end of the dock for a better look. The four of them peered over the edge at Thrawn, who dangled less than a meter beneath the deck, where the slack of the rope had run out. He gazed up at them placidly, unharmed, and the rope clicked once as it dropped him downward in a slow, inching slide.

Che’ri’s face broke into a wide grin. Thrawn returned it with a faint smile of his own and hit the recoil button on his harness, feeding the few inches of rope he’d gained back into the belt. He swung himself over to a nearby ladder — which looked rotten and decrepit to Ar’alani — and climbed back onto the dock as if nothing had happened (though she noticed that he tested each of the rungs carefully before putting his weight on them, as if he trusted the ladder far less than the rope).

“I will still fall from the iceberg if you wish,” he offered Che’ri, dusting off his furs.

She shook her head. “No, it’s okay. I just want to get to the top — it’s cold down here.”

Thrawn didn’t bother to tell her that it would be even colder up top, where the wind was harsh and high. Instead, he glanced around at the other adults, particularly Samakro and Thalias, who were both failing to hide their apprehension. Samakro looked especially uncomfortable, and it wasn’t hard for Ar’alani to guess why; this was a prime chance for Thrawn to show off and embarrass his subordinate and rival Ufsa, who had never ice-climbed before.

Clearly, Samakro still didn’t know Thrawn very well. After studying Samakro for a moment, he turned away and eyed the wall. There was a brief pause, and then Thrawn huffed out a sigh and rubbed the back of his neck.

“I forgot to ask the skipper if he’s seen any jorila’a in the area,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder at _The Icebreaker_ , where the skipper could be seen on-deck helping his men off-load cargo. Thrawn busied himself with adjusting his harness and turned to Che’ri. “Would you mind…?”

Che’ri’s eyes widened and she hurried away at once, not waiting for Thalias, who watched her go with narrow eyes. As soon as the child was out of earshot on what was sure to be a pointless mission, Thrawn said, “I think we’d better take it slowly. It’s been a long time since I visited home and my ice-climbing skills are more than a little rusty.”

Ar’alani caught his eye and gave him an approving nod, which he pretended not to see. They all went silent as they watched Che’ri speak with the skipper; when Ar’alani glanced at Samakro, she found him a bit more relaxed than he had been before, now that he knew he wouldn’t be the last one to the top, even if he turned out to be an exceptionally slow climber.

Che’ri accepted something from the skipper and clomped back down the dock to them as fast as her crampons would allow, waving something over her head victoriously. When she got closer, all she said was “ _Look!_ ” before shoving a handful of holographic paper cards in Thrawn’s face. He studied the cards and gave her a grave nod, as if she’d uncovered some sort of local treasure.

“Well done,” he told her as he passed the cards to Samakro. “This means we’re safe to climb.”

Che’ri beamed. When the cards eventually got passed from Thalias to Ar’alani, she saw they were nothing more than a few battered illustrations of cartoon jorila’a, possibly hand-drawn. In a bastardized version of Chiss script, a speech bubble over their heads read, _‘Safe climbing!’_

“Cute,” she said drily, flicking her eyes toward Thrawn before she returned the cards to Che’ri.

“He said I can _keep_ them,” said Che’ri.

“Then we’d better keep them organized so they don’t get damaged,” said Thrawn seriously. He knelt before Che’ri, helping her unfasten the watertight pocket on her coat. When the cards were secured inside, he showed her how to work the seal and then let her do it on her own while he reattached their harnesses. “Are you ready for the climb?”

The only enthusiastic ‘yes’ came from Che’ri. From Ar’alani, Samakro, and Thalias, Thrawn received nothing more than a series of reluctant grunts, but he responded with perhaps the widest smile Ar’alani had ever seen from him outside of an art museum and raised his ice axe toward the wall. It was still quite a small and muted smile, but it was something.

“ _Kirna chuscah,_ ” Thrawn said cheerfully.

“ _Kirna chuscah!_ ” Thalias and Che’ri repeated, assuming it was some sort of toast. Samakro grumbled his own repetition, mauling the pronunciation beyond repair. Only Ar’alani failed to say it.

She knew just enough Rentorian dialect to know that ‘ _kirna chuscah_ ’ meant ‘don’t die.’

* * *

The climb up was slow, and it came with a few minor mishaps and falls on everybody’s part except Thrawn’s — even Ar’alani slipped once, when she was forced to kick twice to secure her boot in the ice, only for the ice to crumble beneath her when she put her full weight on it to pull herself up. Around them, native Rentorians — some of them younger than Che’ri — scaled the ice at a much faster pace, stopping now and then to stare at the clumsy off-worlders as they passed.

Thrawn matched the pace set by their slowest climber — Thalias — with ease, acting as though he himself could go no faster than that. He seemed unbothered by the sideways glances thrown his way by locals and even chatted with two of the Rentorian children who passed; when they heard their local dialect coming from the mouth of someone as slow to climb as Thrawn, they gave each other a wide-eyed glance and hurried downward; Ar’alani heard them laughing as soon as they were a few meters away.

Thrawn didn’t seem to mind. He kept up a steady stream of conversation with Che’ri to distract her from the heights below them; at the same time, he kept an eye on the other climbers, raising his hand occasionally to steady Thalias with his fingers on her calf. When Che’ri tucked her head against his back and squeezed her eyes shut, Thrawn’s only reaction was to steady his rope and call over his shoulder, “Che’ri, keep an eye on the seabirds for us. Hit them if they get close.”

The seabirds didn’t get close, but for the rest of the trip, Che'ri kept an eye out and seemed to forget entirely about the long fall beneath them.

Only when they neared the top did Thrawn speed up subtly, pulling ahead of the others. He crested the iceberg with ease despite the weight of Che’ri on his back, and when she reached the same spot, Ar’alani saw why — some thoughtful local had wedged a curved metal railing into the ice years before, providing climbers with a textured grip on their way up. She pulled herself up with arms that trembled slightly from exhaustion and was quietly grateful when she felt Thrawn’s hands on her shoulder straps, assisting her up.

He did the same for Samakro and Thalias, waiting patiently for everyone to reach the surface. Around them, the locals milled about with what seemed like pointed disinterest, everyone but the children refusing to glance their way. When Thrawn unclipped Che’ri’s harness and knelt down so she could climb off his back, she turned at once and waved to a girl her age, but the girl wrinkled her nose and failed to return the gesture. Thrawn paused in the middle of helping Samakro take his harness off and turned to Che’ri, perhaps noticing the way her face fell. 

“She’s confused, not angry,” Thrawn said. “The local children all know each other. It’s not common to see a new face wearing jorila fur.”

“Oh,” said Che’ri. When Thrawn stepped away, she followed him automatically — like any child would — and then caught herself and held deliberately still, like an independent (and miniature) adult. Ar’alani eyed her, trying not to smile, and joined Thrawn at the edge.

Together, using a rope-and-pulley system designed by the locals, they hauled their bags off the decks below. Thrawn had assured her the locals wouldn’t pilfer anything when they left the luggage behind, and Ar’alani wasn’t sure whether to feel pleased or annoyed that he’d been right. When they had the bags on the ice next to them, Thrawn gathered everyone’s climbing gear — crampons not included — and stowed them away.

He shouldered two bags as he stood — his and Che’ri’s — and scanned the settlement. Ar’alani followed him away from the edge, doing an assessment of her own before she caught Samakro’s eye, then Thalias’s. Together, the three of them made a face.

This place was even more primitive than they’d thought. 

Samakro kicked at a lump of salt on the ground, shattering it with a point on his crampon. “This is supposed to be _Chiss_ space?” he said to Thrawn. 

“You’re welcome to return to the _Springhawk_ ,” said Thrawn lightly. He set off for the village and the others fell into step behind him, each gawking at the structures and people of Rentor with varying degrees of subtlety. It was truly like something out of a period film, Ar’alani thought — and a niche one at that, since few films bothered with Rentor as a setting. The houses were built low to the ground like the one she’d seen in Thrawn’s holos, and she heard Samakro make a hoarse sound in the back of his throat when they caught sight of a small child standing on a kitchen chair and flipping fish on the metal plates of her roof, just like Thrawn had done. 

Thalias, who hadn’t seen the holos, stared openly at everything they passed. A few people stared at her in turn, making her adjust the frostfox fur around her shoulders uncomfortably — but what Thalias couldn’t see from the front of the group was that everyone stared just as much at Samakro’s tuskcat parka and Ar’alani’s white besca cloak. 

Thrawn wound his way through small shelters and outdoor refrigeration units, leading them in a roundabout way to what looked like the village square. Little shelves of ice were in abundance there, manually carved from the surface of the iceberg and outfitted with canopies and what looked like heating units to provide shelter for the vendors at market. Their wares were spread out on the ice, but none of them were sitting around waiting for customers to come; each person in sight was busy working, haggling, gutting fish, arguing with their neighbors.

Ar’alani blinked as she took it all in. She almost missed it when Thrawn turned mid-step, placing his hand on the arm of a passing fishwife.

“Kivu’nra’adas?” he asked.

The fishwife’s expression didn’t change. Her back was stooped at a harsh angle to support what looked like sandbags strapped across her shoulders. “Boat hasn’t come back yet,” she said, her accent thick and so stereotypically Rentorian that Ar’alani had to stifle a smile by biting the inside of her cheek. 

“When did he go out?” Thrawn asked, releasing the woman’s arm. She was already walking away when she answered over her shoulder.

“Two years, maybe three.”

They watched her go in uncomprehending silence. Only Thrawn took the answer in stride, tilting his head a little as he faced the market square again. After taking a moment to scan the crowds, he seemed to recognize someone and stepped up to a man whose hands were streaming with fish guts.

“Lodging?” Thrawn said.

The man glanced up briefly, grimaced, and said, “I remember _you_ , you bastard. Go get a Fleet shuttle and sleep there for all I care.”

Ar’alani blinked; beside her, Thalias bit back a gasp and Samakro stiffened, but Thrawn seemed utterly unfazed. When Che’ri stepped up to join him, watching the fish-gutting process with open curiosity, the man’s stern expression thawed into something almost like a smile and he said with shocking warmth, “Your old place’s still open, kid. Bosca’s kept it up. This your daughter?”

“Yes,” said Thrawn simply. “Thank you.”

Che’ri’s face had stayed carefully blank when Thrawn said she was his daughter, but her shoulders had tensed a little in surprise, and it took her a moment to realize he was walking away. She hurried to catch up as he returned to the group, gesturing past the market square.

“Why—” she started.

“I need to see a cousin of mine named Bosca,” Thrawn said to the group as a whole, so thoroughly distracted by his thoughts that he didn't seem to hear her. “You’re welcome to come or stay here and explore the market. I’ll meet you back here when I have news.”

“Why—” Che’ri started again.

“Who’s Kivu’nra’adas?” asked Samakro, who was on the other side of the group and hadn’t heard her small voice. Thrawn had already turned away to find Bosca, and his stride didn’t break when everyone in the group fell into step next to him. 

“A family member,” he said. Samakro sped up a little, struggling to match Thrawn’s long-legged pace.

“And when that woman said his boat was out—?”

Abruptly, Thrawn stopped. He turned fluidly to a nearby stand and said something in dialect to the teenager running it, exchanging a small handful of _ch’un_ for what turned out to be — after several minutes of grumbling while he packaged and wrapped the goods — an entire basketful of food. This Thrawn handed to Che’ri, who accepted the bundle after a moment’s hesitation and started lifting wrappers to see what was hidden inside.

“Why did you say Che’ri was your daughter?” asked Ar’alani, since Che’ri had apparently given up.

Che’ri had just pulled out a steamed bun, but now she paused and looked up, glancing between the adults. Thrawn glanced down at her, his face softening slightly.

“None of you pass for locals,” he said, more to Che’ri than to the rest of them. “And there isn’t much I can do to make things easier for the adults. They’ll be treated — not necessarily with hostility — but not politely, and it’s possible that, should they find themselves in need of help, they won’t receive it readily or willingly from the people here. But with you, Che’ri, I can mitigate the effect somewhat; if the adults here think you are related to a native Rentorian, they will accept you as one of their own. I can’t vouch for the children.”

She absorbed this and then gave him a serious nod, even as she blatantly pilfered a steamed bun. Thrawn didn’t reprimand her; after taking a moment to study her face and make sure she understood, he waved the group on and casually returned to Samakro’s earlier question.

“It means he’s dead. Fishermen frequently fail to return from sea. One grows accustomed to vessels which never come back.”

Ar’alani’s step hitched. She remembered a moment not so long ago when Syndic Thurfian had delivered the news to Thrawn that his brother was not coming back with Outbound Flight. Thrawn’s expression had barely changed at the time; there had been a flicker of sorrow noticeable mostly in the slant of his eyebrows and a decrease in facial heat, but nothing else. He’d reacted even less to the news of this Kivu’nra’adas, whatever relation that might be.

They pushed through the market square without making any further stops. Rows of low houses greeted them on the other side, with small children whacking seabirds away from their trays of drying fish using long sticks that seemed designed for no other purpose than this. Thrawn came to one of the houses seemingly at random and said something to the child standing guard in a clipped mixture of local dialect and standard Cheunh.

“She’s inside,” the child said shyly, turning away. When Che’ri tried to wave at him, he pulled the lower half of his balaclava up to hide his eyes. 

Thrawn rapped a fist against the metal sheets on the roof before stooping down, putting his shoulder against the door. It popped open with a groan of protest, revealing a darkened den inside.

“Ah, Thrawn,” said Samakro doubtfully, “are you sure you should be barging in without—”

“Bosca!” Thrawn called, ducking through the low doorway. He beckoned for the others to follow him, but Ar’alani and Che’ri were the only ones to immediately comply. As she stepped inside, Ar’alani’s eyes immediately came to rest on a hardy-looking elderly Chiss who sat in the corner, her feet up against a heating unit.

“Oh, it’s you, you little bastard,” she said without any discernible hostility. When Thrawn had climbed down the steps to the den and was able to straighten up fully, she amended her statement. “ _Big_ bastard.”

Thrawn didn’t respond, giving her only a genial nod in return as he gazed around her house. The stone walls of her house jutted inward slightly, creating nooks and ledges from which various baskets hung. One was filled with fishing line; the old woman reached into a smaller one close to her rocking chair and pulled something small out, tossing it to Thrawn.

He caught it deftly, but not without a look of surprise. “It’s locked?” he said, examining the keys she’d thrown him.

Unseen by Thrawn, Ar’alani pinched the bridge of her nose.

“What’s locked?” asked Samakro, coming up behind them.

“His house,” Ar’alani murmured. Samakro took a moment to process this; when he finished, his face assembled into the same exasperated scowl Ar’alani was wearing.

“Why _wouldn’t_ it be?” he said, drawing disinterested glances from Thrawn and Bosca. “You’ve been gone for years!”

Bosca made an unimpressed hissing noise. “Brought off-worlders with you, eh,” she said to Thrawn.

He gave her a lazy shrug, fiddling with the keys until he found a fob which looked to Ar’alani like an extremely outdated systems trigger. Decades ago, before she was born, these things had been all the rage, especially for commoners who lived in the colder areas of Csilla. With a systems trigger, they could turn the heat on in their homes before they even reached the door. Thrawn thumbed the button and spun a creaky-looking dial on the side of the fob to adjust the temperature.

“It’s not customary to lock one’s doors here,” he explained to the group behind him. He raised his eyebrows at Bosca, quietly requesting an explanation, and after a moment she huffed out a sigh.

“What’s your name now, then?” she asked with a great deal more venom in her voice than when she’d called him a bastard. “I want to know who I’m talking to.”

“Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” said Thrawn evenly.

Bosca rocked back in her chair as she contemplated this. “Odo, eh?” she said, her tone indecipherable to Ar’alani. Would an old fishwife from Rentor even know what the suffix signified? “Well, _Thrawn_ , it came down to there being nobody here to carry out the cleaning rites. Vunraa lost at sea, Vulem lost to the Great Oisce—”

“An ice fissure,” Thrawn said over his shoulder to his companions.

“—and you and Vurass and the rest of them off to who knows where…” Bosca trailed off with a shrug. “Best keep it locked so the little terrors out there don’t break in and trash it.” Her eyes narrowed. “As I recall, there was a certain little fishmonger I once knew who did _exactly_ _that_ when Belra’cru’san died and left the entire house looking like a—”

“Thank you, Bosca, best be going,” said Thrawn quickly. He turned and ushered the others out before him.

“Thank you, Bosca!” Che’ri repeated. 

The old woman, noticing her for the first time, glanced between her and Thrawn, took in their matching jorila fur cloaks, and then kneaded her temples with a sigh. Thrawn had succeeded in pushing everyone but Ar’alani and Che’ri out the door when his elderly cousin called him back. Ar’alani heard Thrawn hiss something between his teeth — perhaps a local swear — before he glanced back at her.

“Yes?” he said politely.

Without a word of response, Bosca raised a gnarled finger and pointed across the room. Thrawn and Ar’alani followed her gesture to the jutting stones on the far side, adorned with various items, some blatantly useful (like the cleaning tools) and others purely for decoration. Ar’alani scanned the wall, trying to figure out which item she was supposed to be staring at.

“Want it?” asked Bosca, her voice flat.

Thrawn glanced at her, his face unreadable. After a moment, he strode across the room — bowing his head a little when the roof sloped downward — and removed a wicker basket which sagged heavily against its handle, as though it were filled with weights. Thrawn cradled it in his arms almost like it was a small child, with one hand flat against the bottom of it to make sure it didn’t burst. He turned back to Bosca.

“Thank you,” he said with a peculiar gravity. Bosca nodded, the same subtle inclination of her chin that Ar’alani had seen a million times from Thrawn. In silence, they left the small house and stood in the light of the distant white dwarf. Samakro had wandered back to the edge of the block and was staring out at the marketplace with his hands stuffed in his pockets; Thalias, a few meters away, was watching as the shy child from earlier showed Che’ri how to flip the fish.

“What is it?” Ar’alani asked, stepping closer to Thrawn.

The walls of the basket had grown soft with age, and he had to hold them apart with his splayed fingers so Ar’alani could see what was inside. Small egg-shaped items were piled on top, rolling around slightly in the breeze; heavier items of various shapes, some vaguely hexagonal, others spiraled and stylized, rested on the bottom.

“Weights and floats,” said Thrawn. He bent his fingers in a silent request and Ar’alani held the basket open for him, allowing him to remove one of the floats and hold it into the light. It was painted beautifully, vibrant hues combining together to form something almost like a sunset. A faint sheen on its surface indicated some sort of waterproof setting spray.

“Are they all painted differently?” Ar’alani asked, craning her neck to glance inside the basket.

“Yes. Different styles, variegated subject matter.” He pushed the floats aside and removed one of the spiraling weights. Unlike the float he’d shown her — clearly brush-painted — this one appeared to have been dipped in a mixture of bright paints, leaving it with abstract swirls and dots of color all around. “They’re used for gillnetting. Weights are attached to the bottom line and floats to the top, keeping the net straight in the waves; we use monofilament line to string the nets themselves. In the water, it’s almost invisible, particularly to fish.”

Ar’alani grabbed one of the hexagonal weights and turned it over, examining the detailed portrait someone had painted on the side of it. It showed a seabird diving downward toward the waves.

“And each family paints their floats differently,” Ar’alani guessed, “so they can tell whose nets are whose when they’re in the water?”

Thrawn stared at the weight in her hand for a long while, not responding. After a moment, he gently deposited his own weight back on the bottom of the basket and Ar’alani did the same, her knuckles brushing his before they pulled apart.

“No,” he said, his voice soft and distant. With his free hand, he unsnapped the fleece buff from around his neck and laid it flat against the floats, hooking the ends of it beneath the weights to keep the floats from flying off in the wind. He did it automatically and absently, as if he’d done it a million times before. “My family is the only one who paints them. At least, the only one in this village. In other settlements, perhaps...”

Ar’alani studied his face, unsure what to say. After a moment, Thrawn met her eyes and then looked past her, at Thalias and Che’ri. He waited until Che’ri had successfully flipped the whole tray of drying fish before he stepped forward.

“Well done,” he said, his lips quirking into a half-hearted smile. He nodded to the small boy and the tray of fish. “Help him take them inside and we’ll be on our way.”

As Che’ri and the boy scampered off, each of them holding one end of the tray, Thrawn turned and met Ar’alani’s eyes again.

“It’s not far now,” he said.

* * *

Each of the houses had their own little idiosyncrasies, but in terms of functionality, the home Thrawn grew up in was no different from the ones surrounding it. It looked much the same as it had in the holos of Thrawn as a child, if not a little more derelict. With a great deal of effort, he detached a long stick — what Ar’alani had come to think of as the ‘bird-whacker’ — from a pair of rusty clamps on the house’s outer wall and brandished it as he unlocked the front door.

“Please tell me that stick is for potential intruders,” Samakro said as Thrawn disappeared inside.

Ar’alani grimaced. She was quite sure the stick was in fact for any large rodents or seabirds which might have found their way inside. After a moment, she walked down the low steps into the house. 

It was dim inside, without any windows to let in the light. Thrawn had the stick in one hand and the key fob in the other, turning the dial on the side of it as he tapped his stick against the musty-smelling furniture his family had left behind. He’d set the basket of weights down on a low shelf, near a chipped old coracle someone had left propped against the wall. As he turned the dial, glowing orbs lit up in nooks and crannies along the stone walls, filling the den with a warm light that only served to illuminate the swirls of dust kicked up by Thrawn’s explorations.

Satisfied with the chairs and sofa, he turned and approached the wooden frame at the far end of the room, the same one he’d slept in as a child. Ar’alani watched as he prodded the primitive-looking mattress — what it was stuffed with, she didn’t know, but it looked like it was made of animal skin — and used the stick to lift each corner, checking underneath.

“Alright,” he called, loud enough for everyone outside to hear him. Che’ri bounded in first, her eyes lighting up as she took in the nets and baskets strung over the walls and carpeting the ceiling. Thalias came next, gravitating at once to a bookshelf in the corner that looked so sturdy it might have been carved out of stone. Samakro was last, his eyes dimming in disapproval as he took in the dust, then lighting up again when he caught sight of the coracle.

“This yours?” he asked, grasping the edge of it. The boat looked too fragile for Rentor’s icy seas; some sort of woven material lined the bottom, with old strips of leather forming a seat in the middle of it. A faded painting crisscrossed the wooden hull.

Thrawn approached Che’ri, taking the basket of foodstuffs from her. He was crossing to the kitchen when Samakro held the coracle up to the light and said in triumph, “ _Vurawn_?”

Ar’alani joined him, studying the shaky signature Thrawn had painted onto the hull of his one-seater fishing boat. The letters were childish, but spindly and slanted, and it wasn’t hard to see how they’d evolved into the elegant handwriting he had today. 

“It _is_ yours,” said Samakro, his satisfaction clear. He held the coracle out at arm's length to examine the hull painting. “What did you _do_ in this? Don’t tell me you went fishing.”

Ar’alani stepped away from him and stuck her head around the corner, where she found Thrawn easing open what appeared to be the only window in the house. It looked out onto the northern side of the iceberg — or at least, what was _currently_ the northern side — and allowed him to access the icebox outside through a small door. The stove was outdoors, too, carefully insulated from the icy surface, and Thrawn had to crook his elbow at an odd angle to reconnect the wires.

“I went fishing,” Thrawn said to Samakro. Ar’alani helped him sort the food into the icebox, privately touched by the quaintness of it; it reminded her of the Ice Age reenactments she’d seen on school trips when she was a child. 

There was the sound of footsteps behind them as Samakro came into the room, still carrying the coracle.

“You’re kidding me,” he said, his voice flat. “In the _ocean_?”

Thrawn didn’t dignify that with a response. It wasn’t like Rentor had any rivers.

“What adult let you go fishing in _this_?” Samakro demanded.

“None of them,” said Thrawn. He wedged the last package into the icebox and turned away, delicately taking the coracle from Samakro. It was so lightweight that he could support it with his palms, without even closing his fingers along the edge. “Adults on Rentor are often too busy for the minutiae of childcare, Mid Captain. My _siblings_ let me go fishing in this.”

Samakro huffed, but he accepted this explanation without further questioning. Instead, he pointed at the hull, prompting Thrawn to turn the boat over and take a look. “And what’s painted on the bottom of it?” Samakro asked.

Thrawn rocked the coracle gently from side to side so that the light from the open window struck it from every possible angle. “You can’t tell?” he asked. When neither Ar’alani nor Samakro answered, he traced the faint, weather-worn lines with his fingers. “It’s an Avidichian clawcraft.”

For a long moment, Ar’alani and Samakro stared at the hull painting, their faces blank.

“It’s a six-year-old’s rendition of an Avidichian clawcraft,” Thrawn amended. “I never claimed to be an artist.”

When they only glanced at each other, saying nothing, Thrawn flipped the coracle back around and walked out of the room with it cradled under his arm, muttering, “The _colors_ are right…”

Ar’alani watched him go, thinking less about his childhood art skills and more about the fact that she hadn’t started to learn the different types of clawcraft until she was twelve — and _her_ parents had actually owned one. When she glanced at Samakro, she found him swiping his finger through the dust on the countertops and checking the pipes to make sure the water ran.

“This place is a nightmare,” Samakro grumbled under his breath. “No wonder he turned out the way he is.”

With a snort, Ar’alani left him alone, certain that he’d have the kitchen spotless before the night was out. In the den, she found Che’ri rooting through a basket she was barely tall enough to reach and Thalias standing placidly before the bookshelf, a faraway look on her face as she paged through the old-fashioned books. 

“Anything good?” Ar’alani asked.

“It’s all nonfiction,” said Thalias, sounding bemused. “No other genres. No storybooks.”

She had a wide, floppy manual in her hands, its dog-eared pages opened to a schematic on Chiss ships that were almost a century out of date. 

“Well, he was the youngest,” Ar’alani said. “And he lived here until he entered Taharim. I don’t see why there would be any storybooks laying around with no one else to read them.”

Thalias hummed noncommittally. When Ar’alani scanned the other titles, she found guides to plants and wildlife on this and other planets, fishing and home repair manuals, electronic engineering and physics textbooks and more than one tome on the Ascendancy and its history, examined from different angles. Some of them were classics that Ar’alani had been forced to read by her grandfather when she was a teen; others were pedestrian, their titles and authors lost to time, probably purchased from crates of surplus at spaceports nearby.

“Not a single artbook,” Ar’alani said, scanning the shelf again to make sure.

“I noticed that, too,” said Thalias. They both stiffened when Thrawn emerged from a nearby supply closet and brushed past them with an armful of canvas.

“Surprisingly, I was not in charge of the family finances as a child,” he said drily.

He handed the canvas to Ar’alani, who accepted the burden with a blink that fully expressed her disapproval (and which Thrawn pretended not to see). 

“My parents slept in a loft farther down the berg,” he said, reaching above his head to fix a series of metal hooks into the ceiling. “Their bed is still there for whoever wishes to use it.” His eyes cut to Ar’alani, making it clear who he believed should get it. “The rest of us have these hammocks and the sofa to choose from.”

Ar’alani helped him hang the canvas from the hooks, producing two insulated hammocks that seemed to sway slightly despite the lack of breeze. Of course, she supposed everything was perpetually swaying on the surface of Rentor’s icebergs; it was just strange to see evidence of it when one had grown accustomed to the slow rotation of the ice and the undulation of the waves.

“Do I get the big bed?” asked Che’ri, glancing over at them. She’d managed to work one of the larger baskets off its hooks and was now arm-deep in it, snooping through the contents.

“Yes, it's meant for children,” said Thrawn. He indicated the basket, which was almost as tall and thin as Che’ri was. “What did you find?”

A wide grin spread across Che’ri’s face. She’d already upended the basket before Thalias had the chance to gasp out a protest, spilling its contents on the dusty floor. Ancient-looking wooden toys and puzzle knots tumbled over each other, making an awful clatter that was only muffled somewhat by the handful of plush toys and cloth dolls that fell out alongside them.

“Ah,” said Thrawn, his voice flat. Still grinning, Che’ri scooped up the obvious prize — an ugly stuffed jorila which looked more like a taxidermy sculpture than a child’s plaything to Ar’alani. She recognized it at once from Thrawn's photos.

“Can I keep it?” asked Che’ri, clutching the jorila to her chest.

“Ah…” said Thrawn again. 

“Che’ri,” Thalias admonished, then lowered her voice to a stage whisper, as if that would stop Thrawn from hearing. “Put that down. It’s probably…” She made an uncomfortable gesture. “...infested with something.”

“It’s fine,” said Che’ri cheerfully. “It matches my cloak.”

The adults couldn’t argue with her on that. They watched as she waltzed away with it to show Samakro — Ar’alani amused, Thrawn dazed, and Thalias horrified. After a moment, Ar’alani turned to Thrawn and studied his face.

“What was his name?” she asked, indicating the stuffed jorila.

“Name?” said Thrawn blankly.

“Mr. Fluffy?” Ar’alani guessed, based on her limited experience with small children. 

“Oh,” said Thrawn, as if he didn’t quite understand what she was saying. Ar’alani let it go with a roll of the eyes; apparently Rentor’s children didn’t do anything so frivolous as name their stuffed animals. She helped him with the second hammock, and they were in the middle of securing it when Che’ri came back from the kitchen, still carrying the stuffed jorila in her arms.

“I’m going to name him Ufsa’bel’ikas,” she announced. “Samakro suggested it.”

Across the canvas they were currently hanging, Ar’alani saw Thrawn’s face twitch, but he didn’t ask Che’ri to reconsider. 

“That’s a respectable name,” he said instead, his voice measured. “Do you know who Sabelik was?”

When Che’ri shook her head, Thrawn and Thalias launched in on a joint history lesson that Ar’alani — largely familiar with the Ascendancy’s famous warriors of yore — largely tuned out. She tested the hammocks and then descended into the lower levels of the house, where she found the loft Thrawn had mentioned earlier tucked between rafters strewn with netting. The ladder here was far sturdier than the rotten, ice-scrimmed one she’d seen on the docks, and Ar’alani climbed up into the loft without trepidation.

The bed where Thrawn’s parents had once slept was smaller than the one in the den, but it was made of the same soft animal skin. A basket of jorila fur stood at the edge of the mattress, which didn’t have a frame. Picking through them, Ar’alani realized these were what the Kivu family had used as blankets when Thrawn was growing up; she spread them over the bed, running her palm over the silky blue-black fur, lost in thought. 

She came out of her reverie only when she heard quiet footsteps on the ladder. By the time Thrawn climbed into the loft, Ar’alani had settled down on the edge of the mattress with her legs bent up as gracefully as could be in such cramped quarters. She glanced at him briefly, then pointed at the marks carved into the rafters before her.

Thrawn settled beside her on the bed, his hair brushing her cheek as he leaned closer. He examined the marks silently. They were expertly carved and smoothed over, but not sanded or treated. 

“My father,” he said by way of explanation, his voice soft. He ran his hand over the carving, which depicted a series of small figures, their features indistinct, sailing over a placid sea in little rounded boats much like the coracle Samakro had brandished about below. “He kept a whittling kit downstairs, tucked into the side of his chair,” Thrawn said. “But he also had a single knife which he kept up here. When he couldn’t sleep...”

Ar’alani nodded, her throat a little too tight for words. There were five figures in the little scene — one for each of the Kivu children, so far as she knew. Thrawn indicated each of them in turn, murmuring their names under his breath with a closed-off distance in his voice that did nothing to hide the air of reverence that had settled over both of them. He didn’t bother to name the last and littlest figure, but he didn’t need to; to this carving and this one alone, Thrawn’s father had applied a paintbrush, dabbing streaks of red and blue on the hull of its boat. It resembled, perhaps a little vaguely, the patterns once painted on Avidichian clawcraft.

Ar’alani glanced at Thrawn, studying the tight lines of his face as he touched the carvings. The vague figure of his sister ahead of him and Thrass ahead of her … their older siblings seeming faded and farther out to sea...

Silently, Ar’alani sat back, letting her eyes slide closed for a moment before she forced herself to open them again.

“You should be the one to sleep up here,” she told him. “I’ll take the hammock. This is _your_ home, and we’re not on a mission. Rank is irrelevant.”

He shook his head just once, an absent-looking _no_ that seemed nonetheless firm, unyielding. He didn’t offer a reason why; she didn’t press him. 

She watched him circle back around to the decades-old carving of a boy who had once been known as Vurass. He rested his palm over it, saying nothing. His eyes were far away.

“It’s not about rank,” he said.

* * *

Their investigation took place after a surprisingly un-depressing Rentorian lunch. The food was nowhere near as bland as Ar’alani expected it to be based on the planet’s utter lack of natural spices — but considering the proximity of the hydro-ponics labs on nearby Jamiron, she supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised. Spice imports had to be cheaper on Rentor than practically anywhere else in Chiss space.

They made their way to the local school, a small series of buildings near the center of the settlement. Ar’alani studied each structure with critical eyes; there was a combined primary school and junior apprenticeship hall on the far end, with the settlement’s public library in the middle and the senior school to the right.

“How far underground do they extend?” she asked.

“Not far,” said Thrawn.

Ar’alani and Samakro shared a glance. Thalias missed it; she was studying the buildings with a doubtful look on her face.

“How many students?” she asked Thrawn.

He gave an ambivalent shrug as he held the door open for them. “Perhaps three hundred in the lower levels,” he said. “Less than a hundred in the senior school; most children don’t opt to go.”

“Didn’t you tell me you had the highest marks in your senior school class?” Samakro asked, sounding scandalized. “How is that worthy of a merit adoption when there’s only a hundred of you in the first place?”

Thrawn said nothing to that, and Ar’alani wasn’t surprised — he’d long since grown used to snide comments about his adoption, and as far as Samakro went, his insults were little more than harmless teasing. But as she brushed past Thalias in the library hall, she noted how the other woman’s eyes widened at Samakro’s words, and how she averted her gaze, biting her lip as facial heat drained from her face.

None of the actions were quite so severe as they sounded when Ar’alani listed them in her head — in fact, they were all quite subtle, apart from the lip-biting. But she filed it away for later examination nonetheless. 

They stepped into a room so aged it could never be properly called “clean.” The bookshelves were dinged and crooked, containing dog-eared paper books on one end of the library and questis storage cards on another. The storage cards were massive — outdated by several decades, even compared to the slim chips Ar’alani had used on Csilla when she was a child — and the array of questis units available for rent were massive, too, each one smudged and damaged from years of manhandling by the people of Rentor.

Thrawn approached the front desk, where a young man wrapped in a thick fisherman’s sweater sat with his waterproof boots up and his crampons hanging on a hook behind him. His face was pockmarked, but his eyes seemed sharp, and he gave Thrawn a crooked smile of recognition when he stepped up.

“Are you Vurass or Vurawn?” he asked with a Rentorian mix of shyness and disinterest.

“Vurawn,” Thrawn said, removing his gloves. The young man nodded as if he’d expected as much. “It’s Thrawn now.”

The librarian didn’t respond, perhaps dismissing the change in name, perhaps distracted by other thoughts. “You were my creche leader in primary school,” he said.

“I remember,” said Thrawn with the same grave approval he frequently showed to Che’ri. “You were very well-behaved during ceremonies, and you already knew how to read.”

“Yeah?” said the librarian, as if he didn’t see the significance. Ar'alani glanced at Thrawn, not sure whether to feel exasperated or amused that this was how he greeted old acquaintances.

“With most of the first-years in the creche, it was my responsibility to indicate each word in the program during ceremonies so they could learn to identify and recognize the letters,” Thrawn explained. “You never required guidance.”

At that, the young man’s crooked smile became a wider, more relaxed grin and his posture thawed a little. He glanced at Thrawn’s companions without much of the wariness they’d seen from other Rentorians so far — though there was _some_ wariness, naturally, and his eyes seemed to linger over-long on their furs (especially Samakro’s). He was still a local, and they were still off-worlders, after all.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, addressing the question solely to Thrawn.

“We’d like to see the technology room, if possible,” said Thrawn.

“Is it official Fleet business?” the man challenged, raising an eyebrow. His gaze raked down Thrawn’s clothes, as if searching for a hidden uniform.

“Not at all,” said Thrawn. Then, with a faint smile, “They don’t trust me with much beyond paperwork, I’m afraid.”

Ar’alani felt Samakro shift next to her, perhaps surprised by this self-effacing lie, but clearly it was the right thing to say. The librarian ushered them around his desk to a nondescript door behind him and pushed it open, giving them access to a room filled with miscellaneous technology — most of it, Ar’alani realized with a grimace, fishing-related. Beside her, Thalias stepped in, took a quick look around, and drew away in immediate disinterest. She left to peruse the books and storage cards instead.

“What are you looking for, exactly?” the librarian asked Thrawn. Thrawn scanned the room and reached for Che’ri with feigned absent-mindedness; she responded to the gesture perfectly, stepping close to him and allowing him to rest a hand on her shoulder.

She was learning way too much about subterfuge and military sneakiness from Thrawn, Ar’alani decided.

“I’m sure it’s a long shot,” said Thrawn apologetically, indicating Che'ri with a dip of his head, “but this is her first visit to Rentor. I thought I might show her footage of the coracle races, only…”

It took the librarian a moment to realize what Thrawn meant. He gave a clipped nod. “That’s right, we were all still using that Moorai model when you left. Let me see what I can find.” As he left the room, heading for the library’s restricted files, he waved a hand at them. “Feel free to look around in the meantime. Might be something on the newer units; they keep pretty much everyone on storage cards now.”

They waited until he was gone, and then Samakro gently pulled the door shut. Thrawn and Ar’alani had already drifted to opposite sides of the room, examining the different models of holo-imaging units available for rent — a surprising number of them were actually fairly modern, Ar’alani noticed, but the fact remained that they were cheap civilian models, easily hacked.

In silence, they worked through the storage cards. None of them really expected to find anything — and they didn’t — but nevertheless, they opened every file labeled “Kivu” and pored through the contents, mostly impersonal budget logs and market inventories. A few showed photos of infrastructure or electrical engineering projects taken on by Thrawn’s cousins, with no faces shown, only machinery.

“Aha,” said Samakro from the other side of the room.

Ar’alani straightened up slowly, her shoulders aching from where she’d been stooping over a storage box. Thrawn strode across the room to get a closer look at the Moorai imaging unit Samakro held triumphantly in his hands.

“That’s the one,” said Thrawn, his voice sharp. He didn’t move to take the unit from Samakro, rather looking over his shoulder while Samakro paged through the contents and their file names. 

“Plenty of Kivus,” Samakro noted.

“There should be,” said Thrawn in a murmur, his eyes scanning over the display screen. “Whether any of those Kivus are me remains to be seen. Let’s take this through to Pikion.”

“ _Finally_ ,” Che’ri muttered, spinning away from the dusty old board games she’d been examining. She bounded out past them to catch up with Thalias, only to deem Thalias’s activities just as boring and wander off on her own instead. 

“Pikion,” said Thrawn, rounding the librarian’s desk again. “We have some files for you to pull up.”

Pikion glanced up from his computer station, accepting the imaging unit and glancing at the highlighted items. “Alright,” he said. “I’ve found some as well that might interest you. One moment.”

They waited patiently as he continued his search, cross-checking with the list from Thrawn. Thalias approached them, keeping a book half-hidden behind her bulky parka until she was close enough to subtly show it to Thrawn without the librarian noticing. He glanced at it, read the title expressionlessly, and nodded. Ar’alani noticed the look of mixed happiness and relief on Thalias’s face as she handed the book over for Thrawn to check out, as if she were afraid Pikion would refuse to lend them the book if he knew an off-worlder planned to read it. She made herself scarce immediately afterward, going in search of Che’ri.

“Here we are,” said Pikion eventually. “I’ll route them to the first questis in that row over there. Let me know if you need help printing anything out.”

“I will,” said Thrawn, but Ar’alani was privately certain none of them — even Che’ri — would require assistance with technology so old and simple. She followed Thrawn to the questis and watched over his shoulder as he flipped through the photos. Samakro took up a silent watch on his other side.

The holos they’d marked from the old Moorai unit were entirely useless. None of them regarded Thrawn’s immediate family, though Bosca was present in more than one. Most were entirely people-free, showing more projects or simple photos of the shipyards and docks. When he reached the last one, Thrawn switched to the photos selected by Pikion without a change in expression.

The first one made them all straighten up a little, their eyes sharpening. It was the same class photo they’d seen before, featuring Thrawn as a six- or seven-year-old with a gash on his forehead and a confident smile on his face. The next file was interesting but useless; it showed the children of Rentor — hundreds of them — sailing their coracles in a section of ice-free ocean while adults watched, using their own, larger vessels to keep the ice shelves temporarily at bay. 

It was impossible to tell whether any of the children shown were Thrawn; even Thrawn confessed he couldn’t be sure. They watched the holo to its end and, when the winner was neither shown nor introduced, moved onto the final file. It was a photo again, but not one they’d seen before, and unfortunately, it showed no people.

For a long moment, they stared at a line of coracles in various stages of disrepair. The two on the left looked well-used but also long-neglected, as if they hadn’t been taken out to sea in years. The one in the middle and the one on the end were scuffed and faded, but looked to have been recently patched by loving, attentive hands. The coracle between them appeared to have never been used.

“Are these….?” Ar’alani started.

Thrawn nodded. He tapped the image to indicate the coracle on the end. “You can see a slight darkening on the edge here, where the hull painting curled close to the oar locks,” he said. Pulling up the metadata, he showed them the name of the person who’d checked the Moorai out and taken the photo. “My father,” he said.

“Your father checked out the imaging unit to take photos of his children’s coracles, but not the children themselves?” said Samakro, keeping his voice even. Thrawn frowned, mild lines of discomfort showing on his face. 

“Rentor is not Naporar,” he said; somehow, his voice came out far more even than Samakro’s. “A lack of childhood photos does not indicate a lack of affection. Some locals believe it’s bad luck to photograph an individual on his own, rather than in a crowd.”

Ar’alani glanced at Samakro, who didn’t seem convinced, and then glanced at Thrawn, who looked as though he were giving undue consideration to Samakro’s question. She remembered the carving she’d seen in the loft earlier that day. Bumping his shoulder slightly, Ar’alani lowered her voice and said to Thrawn, “Who made the coracles?”

She watched as he followed her reasoning and his face softened subtly. He forwarded the file to the printing machine and shut the questis down. “Each child makes his own coracle,” he said without an ounce of emotion in his voice, despite the softening Ar’alani could still see around his features. “With help from his family, of course. My father and I built mine together.”

He stood, collecting his print-out from the machine. A quick glance at Samakro told Ar’alani that he’d missed the significance of the exchange — probably a good thing, she decided. She stalked up and down the book aisles for a while until she’d collected Thalias and Che’ri, by which time Thrawn and Samakro had already stepped outside.

He handed Thalias her book silently, giving Ar’alani a quick glimpse at the title. _Rentor Customs and Culture._ Not a bad choice in reading material, she supposed.

“There’s a man I’d like to visit before we return home,” Thrawn said, eyeing Ar’alani but speaking to the whole group. “I served as his apprentice for a year in engineering and mechanical repair. You’re free to accompany me or explore.”

Thalias and Che’ri were wrinkling their noses. Glancing down at Che’ri, Thrawn seemed to hesitate.

“There is a bookseller in town you may wish to speak to,” he said, turning his gaze on Thalias. “I can give you her name and directions.”

Brightening up, Thalias started to say yes and then faltered, looking down at her charge. Clearly there was some natural divergence between Che’ri’s interests and those of her caregiver, Ar’alani noted with some sympathy for Thalias. But Thrawn was gazing at Che’ri, too.

“The man we’re going to see,” he said, and hesitated again before relenting, “makes automata and video games in his spare time. Many of the toys you see around the village were built by him.”

“I’m going with Thrawn,” said Che’ri at once.

“Well, alright,” said Thalias, looking almost guiltily relieved. She glanced at Ar’alani and Samakro, perhaps checking if they wanted to come, and then turned to Thrawn. While he was busy pointing out the route and giving instructions, Ar’alani drifted toward the primary school, lured by a series of plasteel-coated drawings attached to the outer walls. 

They were the same as any other child’s drawings — though most of them were notably less skilled than Che’ri. Some showed their fathers and mothers out to sea; others showed grandparents preparing fish and repairing nets; only one showed a jorila, and this was the one Ar’alani found herself studying the most closely. It was a new drawing, dated from the week before like all the rest, and signed by a child with the surname Nollt, so there was no reason to think it had any connection to Thrawn. Yet it called to her nonetheless, something about the simple graphmarker lines making her frown and furrow her eyebrows.

Perhaps it was the odd composition of the drawing. It showed a jorila in the water, surrounded by blue shapes Ar’alani could only assume were meant to be chunks of ice. Behind the jorila, lying flat in the scribbled ocean, was a bearded Chiss. He didn’t appear to be swimming; his arms were down at his sides and his feet were together, as if he were simply floating on the surface the same way people on holiday floated in the warmer seas of Naporar. Most notable, she supposed, was that the jorila did not resemble the cartoon characters Thrawn had shown her in the slightest. If a child were to draw the planet’s mascot, it seemed natural to Ar’alani that he would imitate the cartoons he’d grown up with, but this child had clearly seen the real animal at least once and used that image for reference instead.

Dimly, she heard Thalias saying goodbye to Che’ri and forced herself to turn away from the child’s drawing. By the time she’d rejoined Thrawn and the others, she’d already forced it out of her mind.

“Apprentice toymaker is _entirely_ different from apprentice engineer,” Samakro was saying, his voice hot. 

“Not when the toys are automata,” Thrawn replied. “Besides, very few of my duties as apprentice involved toy-making or games. Master Yormici values a well-rounded worker; he incorporated as many different appliances and crafts into my training as was possible at the time.”

“And why are we visiting him?” asked Ar’alani, falling into step with the group. “A social visit, or an interrogation?”

“A social visit can also serve as an interrogation, when need be,” Thrawn said. “Master Yormici founded the library’s technology rental service and held training sessions each week for those interested. He was, for many years, the only man in the village capable of repairing the Moorai imaging unit when it malfunctioned.”

“Why do you care about that old camera?” asked Che’ri, craning her neck to stare up at Thrawn. Ar’alani pursed her lips and waited to see how Thrawn would deflect.

“Because someone anonymous has sent me holo images and videos of my childhood, and I would like to know who that person is,” Thrawn explained. 

Ah. So he _wouldn’t_ deflect. Okay.

“It was probably your mom and dad,” Che’ri said.

“My parents could not operate the camera without assistance,” Thrawn said. “More importantly, they could not send the holos to me now, as they’ve been dead for many years.”

“Perhaps they could have scheduled a message,” Samakro suggested. “Some services do that; you can draft the ‘gram and set it to send automatically after a certain amount of time.”

“Yes,” said Thrawn. “But those services are not functional in seaside or rural villages; even on Naporar, one must travel to a city to access the network properly. On Rentor, one can only access off-world messaging capabilities at the orbital stations.”

Samakro glanced up as he walked, but the orbital stations weren’t visible from the planet’s surface. They made their way to Master Yormici’s house in silence after that, breaking it only occasionally so Che’ri could ask a question and Thrawn could answer it. 

The meeting with Thrawn’s former master went as well as could be expected, though it was several hours longer than Ar’alani had been prepared for. Yormici greeted Thrawn with the same gruff lack of surprise as the other Rentorians, as though part of him always suspected Thrawn would wash out of the Fleet and come limping back — no matter how many veiled references to Thrawn’s success Ar’alani and Samakro made, they couldn’t seem to shake Yormici of this conviction. Thrawn, for his part, seemed to resent their attempts at bolstering his reputation almost as much as Yormici did, and eventually Ar’alani accepted it as a cultural quirk and backed away.

With Che’ri, she examined the shelves of Yormici’s workroom. The automata Yormici crafted were almost entirely made of metal sheets and aluminum, with clear glass piping that filtered water through the structures in beautiful patterns and arrays. Some of the automata had hidden lights which made the water flash and glimmer; all of them included flash-freeze and flash-thaw technology so that the water turned to ice at designated times, forming a wintry crown over one automaton’s head and assembling itself into a frosted sword in the hand of another.

“Can _Thrawn_ make these?” Che’ri whispered, her eyes narrow.

Ar’alani watched one of the automata form the tusks of a tuskcat out of flash-frozen ice. If Thrawn _could_ make something like this, she decided the universe just wasn’t interested in being fair. Let the man stick to military tactics if he had to be good at something. Behind the workbench, Master Yormici was busy repairing what looked like a primitive boat engine; he and Thrawn spoke in low tones in a mix of regional dialect and standard Cheunh. Thrawn’s face was dark, and after a moment he pulled away from Yormici in exasperation and said quite shortly,

“You are being rude to my guests, Yormici.”

Yormici scowled and looked ready to argue. His eyes raked over Samakro with scorn, but something softened in his face when he looked at Che’ri — and, Ar’alani noted with some surprise, when he looked at her.

“Fine,” he said in standard Cheunh. “If you want to have this conversation publicly, let’s do it. A true Rentorian does not leave his family behind for a political alliance, Vurawn, not even with one of the Nine Ruling Families. In _particular_ , not with one of the Nine Ruling Families.”

There was unmistakable bitterness in his voice, and looking around at the beautiful automata that filled his shop — and the fully functional engines and bits of technology nestled between them — Ar’alani could understand why. Thrawn made no argument on his own behalf.

“At the very least,” Yormici continued, “a true Rentorian would open the doors to his comrades rather than leave them behind. Vunraa and Vulem spent their entire lives waiting for you to send for them. Vurass—”

“Then perhaps I am not a true Rentorian,” Thrawn said. His voice was even; Ar’alani suspected she was the only one who could see the deepening lines around his eyes. He gestured to the scattered pieces of technology around the room. “According to the village elders, neither are you.”

Yormici’s face was blank. He tinkered with his engine for a moment.

“There’s a statue in the village square now,” he said. “Some general from the Fleet. Have you seen it?”

“General Ba’kif,” Thrawn said with a nod.

“He’s not even from Rentor,” said Yormici, shaking his head. His face softened a little, but more from weariness than anything else, and he set his multitool aside with a clank of metal against wood. “And it’s been defaced to all hell. You Kivu kids would have done something truly terrible to it if it had been here back in the day. Drenched it in creosote and given it a new headdress made of woven fish spines, I suspect.”

Thrawn inclined his head and made no argument. After a moment, Yormici’s sardonic little smile faded.

“What do you want from me, Thrawn?” he asked. “You’re not here to _help_ , I take it?” He flung a hand out toward the rows of automata. “Or to buy something?”

Thrawn glanced behind him at the shifting sculptures of ice and metal. For a moment, Ar’alani was surprised by the coldness she saw on his face, when his eyes normally lit up at the sight of art. But then she realized it wasn’t coldness she saw; it was something deliberately closed-off and suppressed.

“No,” he said finally, his voice flat. “When I was your apprentice, we frequently repaired the Moorai imaging unit from the library. You gave introductory lessons in its usage multiple times.”

“Yes,” said Yormici, his eyes narrowing.

“Did you ever offer lessons or repair to villagers with their own cameras?” Thrawn asked.

Silence filled the room. Yormici sat back on his creaky old chair and stroked his chin as his eyes roamed over his shelves, taking him back through the years.

“Most people here don’t have much opportunity to get their hands on things like that,” he said musingly. “It’s more common now, of course, but thirty years ago…”

“Do you have a list of names?” asked Thrawn.

Yormici scoffed, but didn’t immediately say no. “It’s not much of a list,” he said. “When you were a kid, let’s see … about the only person who had access to things like that was the Patriel, and she only visited me once that I can remember, looking to buy a new datachip.”

“The Patriel does not live here,” Thrawn said evenly. “We are looking for someone who lives in the village, or had frequent access to it.”

“Someone not in your family,” Yormici added as he thought it over.

There was a mid-sized period of silence. Thrawn’s lips twitched downward.

“Someone not in my family?” he said. 

Yormici spread his hands in an expansive gesture. 

“Someone such as who?” Thrawn asked. His voice was deceptively calm, Ar’alani thought, but a ripple of tension went through the room nonetheless. “My parents were not—”

“Your parents?” said Yormici with a clipped laugh. “No, certainly not. Your father nearly broke the Moorai unit the one time he used it. I mean, you’re looking for someone who owned their own camera _other_ than your brother, right?”

Thrawn was silent.

“Other than Vurass?” Yormici prompted.

The silence dragged on. Che’ri had stopped her examination of the automata and was now, like Ar’alani and Samakro, watching the two men before her. Samakro caught Ar’alani’s eye, shooting her a questioning glance.

“You two were thick as thieves,” said Yormici, his voice softening into something almost like an apology. He said something in regional dialect, perhaps an untranslatable idiom, and this time Thrawn didn’t correct him. Switching back to standard Cheunh, he said, “I thought you knew.”

Thrawn shook his head. He seemed frozen, his face distant and blank, until Ar’alani stepped up next to him and let her shoulder brush against his. Blinking, Thrawn focused on Yormici again.

“What type of imaging unit did he have?” he asked.

Yormici studied Thrawn’s face a moment before answering. “Hydraskian model,” he said. “State-of-the-art at the time. Small enough to fit in your pocket, but with dual imaging lenses, a great deal of storage space, and … ah, a high-power transmitter.”

Thrawn’s eyes narrowed. “How high?”

“High enough to reach the orbital stations,” Yormici said with a shrug.

There was a pause as Thrawn made some mental calculations, then shook his head. “Thrass couldn’t have purchased a unit like that,” he said.

“Well, now,” said Yormici cautiously, “he was in the Junior Syndicure, remember? He traveled around quite a bit to the orbital stations when you were young. Maybe he got himself a good apprenticeship—”

“No,” said Thrawn firmly. “He was an apprentice bookkeeper. His only recourse to obtain a unit like that would be to steal.”

His voice was rough; his shoulders moved in a twitchy, agitated shrug, as if his fundamental image of his brother was being changed. When Ar’alani put a hand on his forearm, he stilled, but his face was still dark.

“Or it could have been a gift,” Yormici said.

Thrawn said nothing to that. After a moment, eyeing his former apprentice, Yormici turned away with a shrug.

“Not sure what good reason there is to gift a Kivu boy with a camera like that,” he said. 

“For his edification,” Thrawn murmured, sounding uncertain. His eyebrows were furrowed, his eyes fixed on the floor. “A well-meaning teacher. Or client. Someone who saw his potential.”

Yormici gave him a doubtful look.

“He became a merit-adoptive of the Mitth,” said Thrawn, his voice growing stronger. “He had potential.”

Yormici nodded. His eyes were fixed on the broken engine; he’d already picked his multitool up and seemed a thousand klicks away.

“Much good it did him,” he said. "You're the only one who came back."

* * *

By the time they finished their social visits/interrogations and reconnected with Thalias, they had no more information than before. It was past nightfall, and almost everyone in the village had retreated inside, leaving their party to walk home in isolation across the ice.

But they weren’t entirely alone.

There was a small group of people — twelve or so, Ar’alani estimated — perched on an ice shelf far below them, just visible over the edge of the iceberg. There were no docks around them and the only sign of technology was their ice-climbing gear, which they’d discarded back against the wall. A row of glowing lanterns illuminated their movements and played over their skin.

“They’re not wearing furs,” Samakro remarked. He sounded like he wasn’t sure whether to be scandalized or concerned, but he was right — the Rentorians below were dressed in flimsy-looking gauze robes, their shoulders hunched against the wind. Larges swatches of blue skin showed at the chest and arms of their robes, a sight so cold that it made Ar’alani draw her fur cloak closer around her.

“What are they doing?” she asked.

Thrawn seemed oddly reluctant to explain. He narrowed his eyes and glanced over the edge of the iceberg, but said nothing. 

“It’s a funeral custom, I think,” Thalias piped up.

They all turned to look at her except for Thrawn, who was still watching the procession below.

“I read about it in the book I got from the library,” Thalias said. Her eyes were lit up from the opportunity to share information. “Some Rentorians are part of a religious sect who have to wear certain clothing during ceremonies, but pretty much all of them do something like this, even if most of them wear furs — right, Thrawn?”

Gazing down at the ceremony below, Thrawn nodded. The wind blew his hair back and forced him to step away; he dug absently through his pockets until he found his wool skullcap and pulled it on. His eyes were hard but far away.

“So what are they doing?” Samakro asked, taking Thrawn’s place at the edge. “It seems awfully dangerous — Che’ri!”

He gripped her by the arm as she tried to join him and pulled her back, muttering a Naporar curse.

“It’s based on an ancient myth from when Rentor was first colonized,” Thalias said. “Some locals said that jorila’a swam alongside fishing boats and forced them to crash, then ferried the drowned to the other side of the ice — the afterlife.”

“The unknown,” Thrawn corrected in a murmur, his face tight.

“Eventually, it became a tradition to consign all bodies to the sea,” Thalias continued. “When someone dies, you take their body down to the water, wrapped in gauze and weighted down, and you wait for the jorila’a to guide them away. Certain religious sects risk frostbite by dressing in the same gauze robes of the dead.”

Ar’alani glanced at Thrawn, whose eyes snapped to meet hers almost defensively. “It’s an old superstition,” he said, his voice cold.

“So the jorila’a are meant to be scary?” Che’ri asked. She seemed ghoulishly pleased by this development.

“Not scary, no,” said Thrawn. His lips were pursed. “Children are taught to appreciate the jorila’a so they aren’t frightened when family members fail to return from the sea.”

With a tingling sensation, Ar’alani remembered the child’s drawing she’d seen outside the school — the jorila in the water and the Chiss man floating along behind it, making no attempt to swim. A chill went through her; like Thrawn, she turned away from the display. 

She remembered the cartoon figures of jorila’a that the children of Rentor apparently collected, and how the locals took jorila fur and wore it almost like a second skin. His parents had given him a stuffed jorila to cuddle when he was a child, she remembered. They’d inured him to death right from the cradle, taught him to embrace it like a friend. As if he sensed her looking at him, Thrawn turned and met her gaze.

“It’s just an old legend,” he said under his breath, but his eyes were tight, and he didn’t speak loud enough for the others to hear. 

* * *

That night, Samakro glanced sideways at the hammock next to him and rubbed his eyes. He could feel himself swaying somewhat as the iceberg dipped and turned in the ocean, a feeling that left him tense and uncomfortable but seemed to have no effect on Thrawn. He was laid out comfortably in his hammock with a blanket of jorila fur spread over him, his hair falling softly over his forehead, his eyes hooded.

Blue dust glittered in the air over his head. Samakro watched as Thrawn flipped through the images, studying again the holos from his childhood. He stopped on an image Samakro had noticed before — Thrawn as a toddler, studiously wielding a triangle-shaped sailmaker’s needle and driving it through a piece of animal hide. An older boy knelt nearby, muttering encouragements but not advice; he held the hide still over the wickerwork frame of the coracle while his younger brother worked.

Thrawn’s eyes flicked toward Samakro. After a moment, he hit the volume dial, rotating it upward until Samakro could just make out the older boy’s voice. The words meant nothing to him, degraded by static and likely not in standard Cheunh anyway, but across the room, Thalias glanced up from her book and caught sight of the holos for the first time.

“What’s that?” she asked quietly, mindful of Che’ri, who was fast asleep in the same room.

Thrawn said nothing. Samakro watched as Thalias unfolded herself from the sofa and walked over, leaving her book behind. She stood between their hammocks, watching the holo with a strange look on her face.

“Is that you?” she asked Thrawn in a whisper.

Samakro struggled to sit up a little. “You haven’t seen these yet?” he asked her. “It’s the whole reason we’re here.”

Thalias glanced back at him, and he could tell at once from the expression on her face that no one had told her. Samakro grimaced and turned his eyes back to the holo.

“I’m the younger one, yes,” said Thrawn, angling the holodisc so she could see. “The older one is my brother.”

“Syndic Mitth’ras’safis?” Thalias asked.

Thrawn only nodded.

“ _Syndic_ ,” Samakro muttered, rubbing his eyes. “ _You’re_ related to a Syndic.”

“Was,” Thrawn said with an unconvincing shrug. Samakro went still, wondering if it was physically possible to swallow on his own foot or if he was doomed to gag on it for all eternity.

“What do you mean, this is what we came here for?” asked Thalias softly, cutting through Samakro’s embarrassment. 

Thrawn handed her the holodisc and let her click through it, examining the images and vids in silence. After she’d been through half of them, Thrawn shifted in his hammock much more gracefully than Samakro had and sat up, the jorila fur sliding back to reveal his insulated undershirt.

“Someone sent me these through an anonymous ‘gram provider,” Thrawn said. “So far, we haven’t been able to trace it back to its source.”

Thalias’s brow wrinkled. She called up the photo of Thrawn as a toddler clutching his stuffed jorila.

“It seems awfully mild for blackmail,” she remarked.

“It’s not blackmail,” said Thrawn. He glanced at Samakro, who gave him a shrug. “Why does everyone think it’s blackmail?”

“Well, why else would it matter?” asked Thalias. She clicked through to the next photo. “Everyone has images of themselves like this as a child. Even sky-walkers.”

“No,” said Thrawn. “Not everyone. Until I saw these images in the message, I would have said the sole existing image of me as a child was a class photo taken shortly after I fell from the ice walls climbing down to the docks.”

Both Thalias and Samakro froze, casting him a beady-eyed look. 

“This was before the polylastic rope came into vogue,” said Thrawn. He took the holodisc back from Thalias and scanned through the images again, more rapidly this time. “No one in this village owned their own camera when I was a child. My parents included. That is why this message so concerned me.”

“Except your brother,” Samakro reminded him.

“Yes,” Thrawn murmured. He’d found the vid of himself and Thrass again and watched it play out in silence. “Except my brother.”

Thalias looked between them, trying to read their faces. Samakro’s was open and easy to interpret, he knew, because he had nothing to hide. But Thrawn’s was, as ever, closed-off.

“So mystery solved?” Thalias asked.

“Not quite,” said Thrawn, his face darkening until it was almost a scowl. “If Thrass took these photos, where did he acquire a camera? Why did he keep it hidden? Why did he not tell me he owned an imaging unit? Why did he take images only of me? And why did he key them to send to me anonymously, after his—”

Thalias and Samakro stayed silent. After a moment, Thrawn turned the holodisc off and lay back in his hammock until the darkness and the canvas worked together to hide his face.

“After his death,” he finished, his voice steady.

Thalias bit her lip. She shifted her stance and glanced behind her as quiet footsteps came from behind Samakro; when he turned, he saw Ar’alani entering through the doorway, her head cocked in curiosity. But she said nothing, and after a moment, Thalias turned back to Thrawn.

“Your brother was a Syndic,” she said hesitantly.

Thrawn said nothing. From his hammock, Samakro could see Thrawn’s hands traveling over the holodisc absently, his thumb brushing against the buttons and dials.

“Was he adopted before you?” asked Thalias. “Or after?”

“Concurrently,” Thrawn said. “But I was scouted first. I was already off-planet by the time he completed his interviews.”

Ar’alani had walked farther into the room, skirting their hammocks to check on Che’ri. It was clear from her posture that although her eyes were on the sleeping child, she was listening to Thalias and Thrawn speak.

“And he was sponsored into higher education,” Thalias continued, her tone that of an educated guess, “and became a Syndic not long after?”

“An aide first, but yes,” said Thrawn.

Samakro studied Thalias, trying to see where she was going with this. She glanced back and met his eyes, and he could see from the hesitation on her face that she wished he weren’t here — that it was just her and Thrawn, without any other non-Mitth butting in. Stubbornly, he refused to leave.

“You weren’t interviewed for your adoption, were you?” Thalias asked Thrawn.

Samakro’s eyes sharpened. Across the room, Ar’alani glanced their way.

“No,” said Thrawn. “I was taken from school and sent straight to the adoption ceremony.”

“And you don’t find that strange?” asked Thalias. When Thrawn didn’t answer, she said, “You don’t think perhaps the local Patriel had orders to wave you through?”

Thrawn said nothing for a while. His head turned and he looked Thalias in the eyes, his face expressionless.

Quietly, so quietly Samakro could barely hear her, Thalias said, “I met the Patriarch during my trials, Thrawn.”

He still didn’t respond. Samakro tried so hard to keep still that he thought he might freeze; he was worried that any slight movement — even the rise and fall of his own breath — might produce a sound to drown out what Thalias had to say.

“His name is Thooraki,” Thalias continued. “He told me to watch out for you. He said for years you’d had a protector in the Syndicure, someone to look after you politically, but…”

There was no answer but the sound of the wind against the house’s stone frame. It whistled through the walls, bringing no draft but making Samakro shiver all the same.

“He said he’d been watching you since you were a child,” Thalias continued. “Don’t you think maybe it’s possible — that is, the camera your brother had. If it was a gift from the local Patriel, that would explain how he got it. If he was promised a chance at adoption in exchange for keeping quiet about it, so you didn’t know you were being considered—”

“So it wouldn’t affect my behavior,” Thrawn finished for her, his voice barely a whisper. “Yes.”

Thalias fell silent. She fidgeted with the edge of her frostfox coat and studied Thrawn, but his face gave nothing away. Even Samakro could read nothing off him, and after a long moment, Thrawn’s hands went still on the holodisc and he held it close to his chest, as though the warmth from the battery might soak into his skin and warm him, too.

“Thank you, Thalias,” he said. Thalias nodded and moved away awkwardly, retreating to her sofa. Ar’alani, stationed by Che’ri’s bed, waited a while longer as though she thought Thrawn might have something to say.

But Samakro watched Thrawn closely, and for the next hour, he didn’t speak, and he didn’t move at all.

* * *

The cleaning rites took less than a day with the five of them working together. Thalias had told them all this morning what they might expect while Thrawn was busy searching through his family’s possessions, but in the end, very few of her predictions came true. The book she’d read was filled with traditions and superstitions, and Thrawn was neither a traditional nor superstitious man.

He gathered old clothes left behind by his parents and older siblings and packed them away in bins, which Che’ri and Samakro carried to a donation center in town. He sorted the fishing supplies to determine what was useful and what was beyond repair; these he took down to the docks by himself, leaving them there in a wicker basket for the fishermen to pick through at their leisure.

Thalias was given free reign over the books, allowed to determine which she wanted to keep and which could be taken to the bookseller or library. Thrawn himself showed no desire for any of them; his eyes raked over the books without emotion before he shook his head.

They’d completed nearly all their organizational chores now, and there was little left to do but sweep the floors. The furniture would stay here, Thrawn said, for whichever young family moved in when he was gone. The five of them worked in silence, each taking up a separate area of the small house and chatting infrequently, in quiet tones. 

“If there’s no one in the Kivu family left, why hasn’t someone performed the cleaning rites already?” asked Samakro.

“Largely because there is someone in the Kivu family left elsewhere,” Thrawn said evenly, indicating himself. He swept a rag through the stone crevices in the walls, bringing out cascades of dust and the occasional small toy, tucked away by one of the Kivu children years before and subsequently forgotten. He showed each one to Che’ri, who shook her head in disdain but clutched the stuffed jorila to her chest. “It is the duty of the last surviving family member to perform the rites,” Thrawn continued. “Only if the entire family dies at once may the village step in.”

Ar’alani could feel Samakro and Thalias glancing sideways at her and she knew exactly what they expected her to say, but she refused to acknowledge their stares. As Thrawn’s commanding officer — and more importantly, as a flag officer who had given up her own family name — it was her duty to remind him he was not in fact a member of the Kivu family and had not been since he was seventeen. 

But, like many flag officers, Ar’alani still referred to Zihalnu and Zirisk as Mother and Father, and she wouldn’t reprimand Thrawn for his feelings. In fact, she suspected that even if he’d said something more trivial — something more lighthearted than cleaning rites that still indicated a preference for blood family over his political alliance with the Mitth — and even if he’d been idiotic enough to say it somewhere public, on the bridge of a ship or in front of a Syndic, she wouldn’t have reprimanded him. Maybe someone else, but not Thrawn.

And certainly not today.

She stuck close to him while the others went about their assigned chores. Together, they climbed into the loft his parents had shared and sanded down the carvings on the rafters until nothing was left. In the spacious den, they knelt on either side of the coracle he’d made with help from his father and Thrass, and together they stripped the faded hide with its clawcraft painting and dismantled the willow branches which made up its frame. 

And when nothing was left to do, they turned and faced the old wicker basket sitting in the center of the floor. 

Ar’alani glanced at Thrawn. His eyes were hooded, his expression difficult to read. In silence, he gathered his jorila cloak and Ar’alani automatically reached for her besca furs, refusing to be left behind. She grabbed one side of the basket; he grabbed the other. Either of them could have borne the weight alone; neither of them tried.

They climbed down the northern slope of the ice, taking a narrow path so worn by wind and time that their harnesses and ropes were only precautions; with the help of the crampons on their boots, they could walk down the side until they reached an ice shelf where, just yesterday, they’d seen the twelve Rentorians in their funeral garb sending a loved one off to sea.

They knelt at the edge of the ice, the basket between them. Plates of ice bobbed in the ocean so close that Ar’alani could reach out and touch them with her fingertips; she felt near-frozen water lapping over her boots with each wave.

Thrawn studied the ocean for a while before he reached into the basket and removed one of the painted floats. Baskets of fish, simple but clear, were etched in near-identical patterns on every side.

Thrass painted that one. Ar’alani didn’t have to ask; she knew by the look in Thrawn’s eyes as he dipped his hand in the water and pushed the float out to sea. One by one, he removed the floats and weights, examining each decades-old painting in turn. 

The floats bobbed on the surface, weaving their way through chunks of ice until the waves had borne them away. The weights disappeared from Thrawn’s fingers and sank beneath the water, visible for only a meter or so before their bright flashes of color were snuffed out forever. 

On an ice shelf far out to sea, Ar’alani could see dark shapes watching them. A pack of jorila’a, their fur wet from the ocean but still looking fluffy and warm, their dark eyes trained on Thrawn in animal curiosity as they rested in the sun. The floats bobbed closer and closer to them, until they were so small that Ar’alani couldn’t make them out.

When Thrawn pulled his knees up to his chest and leaned against her, she leaned back, appreciating the warmth. His fingers were bare and clenched tightly on his trousers to keep them from shaking. His face was expressionless, his eyes hard. The basket was empty between them.

She watched a painted float get trapped between two chunks of ice.

She watched a jorila dip its paw into the ocean and guide the float Thrass and Thrawn had painted together back to open sea.


End file.
